ipickmynose presented the wooden birds, the old-fashioned way, goh nakamura @ the rickshaw stop (photos, review, etc)
Last night ipickmynose presented the Wooden Birds (myspace), the Old-Fashioned Way and Goh Nakamura (myspace) at the Rickshaw Stop.
I was looking forward to seeing Goh Nakamura since I’d heard good things about him. With his late-era Elliott Smith-like stylings and a loop pedal at foot, he put on a solid show that veered from soft love song to distorted guitar solo. It was a good set.
I honestly don’t have much to report on the Old-Fashioned Way. They played well enough but their music doesn’t do it for me.
I was really excited about seeing the Wooden Birds–Andrew Kenny of American Analog Set’s new band, which I don’t need to tell you if you’ve been reading this blog. They played great sets at SxSW and I was hoping for a repeat.
Repeat they did. Playing again as a five piece–though with two different percussionists than the last time–their live sound is meticulous and well-balanced, but they still have fun on stage. Running through their album songs, I found myself really absorbed in the songs and the show.
It’s a hard act to describe exactly why I like it so much but I did. This may be a weird way to say it, but in the end, what tells me if I like a live show is how loudly I’m saying ‘yay!’ in my head during the show. Musicianship and song selection and banter and stage presence and audience interaction can all play into that but are themselves secondary to that one metric. ‘Yay!’ was pretty loud during this set.
In total they played almost all of Magnolia and then two American Analog Set ‘covers’–”Aaron and Maria’ and ‘the Kindness of Strangers’. Pretty much all of it was great, but my favorites were those covers plus ‘Bad’ and ‘Anna Paula’.
A couple other notes.
- My friend told Andrew Kenny that he liked the songs the Wooden Birds covered and asked if the band that wrote them was any good. AK: “They’re hit and miss”.
- Andrew Kenny is super nice. He spent a great deal of time after the show behind the merch table signing things and chatting to fans.
- Apparently Steve Wozniak at the show. A couple separate people reported this.
All in all, I was really happy with it. Thanks for coming if you made it there.
